The funeral’s at three. It’s the worst time of day, when the sun’s been beating down for a good nine hours, before it finally starts descending and offers just a little relief.

The grave site is at the far end of the cemetery, a decent walk from the nearest paved road through the place. I’m sweating the moment I get out of the car, and with every step I wonder why the hell I’m wearing a suit at all.

It’s not like Eli’s ever gonna know. It’s not like my mom’s gonna remember, and I don’t really give a shit what the discount preacher I found last-minute thinks.

But it felt right to wear a suit to my little brother’s funeral, and that feeling is pretty much I have to go on right now. With this. With anything.

I walk around to my mom’s side of the car, offer her my hand. She has some trouble with the right side of her body, and she’s having a particularly bad day today so I have to practically haul her out of the car and she clings to my arm like she’s drowning and I’m her only lifeline.

We head for the grave site slowly, my mom walking very carefully around the headstones, the dips in the ground, the raised tufts of grass slowly going bone-dry. She almost trips a few times, but I catch her, and we keep going.

A small mercy: she finally remembered about Eli this morning. I think Isabel took pity on her and told her a few times as well. I should thank her for that.

Halfway to the gravesite, my mom stops. Her breathing is a little hard, and she’s sweating as well under her black blouse and black pants.

“Trent,” she says, her voice a little shaky and uncertain.

“Yeah?”

She works her mouth, like she’s having trouble forming words, and I wait.

“This isn’t where your father is buried,” she finally says.

“I know.”

“We should bury Eli next to his father.”

I swallow hard. This isn’t the first time today we’ve had almost this exact conversation, and I’ve got a feeling it won’t be the last.

“I’m not burying Eli next to that man, Mom.”

“They should be together.”

“No, they shouldn’t. Come on.”

There are a thousand more things I could say. I could even get away with them, because in twenty minutes they’ll be gone from her memory, but I keep my mouth shut.

I’ve already wrecked enough by saying something I shouldn’t have this week.

Finally, we’re by the grave, a few minutes early. The cemetery’s set up a tent over the graveside, and mom and I sit on shaded folding chairs, Eli’s coffin on a metal contraption, hovering over the open hole in the dirt.

Just looking at it, my gut clenches. Even though I didn’t want an open casket — staring at my dead brother just didn’t appeal to me — I have the crazy urge to open it and look inside. I just want to make sure that he’s really there, that he’s really dead, that this isn’t some long, bizarre joke being played on me.

“There ought to be a service,” my mom says, her voice fading again.

“We’re early,” I tell her. “The minister’s coming.”

She looks around. Her right hand has started shaking a little, and I just watch it for a long moment. Thinking that they needed me, her and Eli, and I just abandoned them. The second I could get out of that house, out of Low Valley, I did.

We sit there, quietly, for several more minutes. No one else comes, but I wasn’t expecting anyone. Eli’s friends are mostly in prison, or not the funeral types, and it’s not like we’ve got any other family worth inviting.

“Trent,” my mom says after a while, like she’s just realized something. “This isn’t where your father’s buried.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We should bury Eli next to his father.”

I want to scream. I want to throw this chair into the grave, I want to kick my stupid brother’s stupid coffin. I want to fucking destroy everything I can see, anything so I don’t have to tell my mother again and again that it’s up to me and we’re not fucking burying my brother next to the man he was unfortunate enough to be descended from.

“They should be together,” she says.

“I’m not burying Eli next to Dad,” I say.

Finally, someone else is walking over to the grave site: another man in a suit, the same carefully somber expression I saw all over faces at the funeral home. I stand, help my mother up.

“Reverend McCarthy,” he says, going to my mother first, shaking her hand tenderly like she’s a child. “You’re the family.”

“Yes,” she says, and I nod.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says, his face practically radiating sorrow and empathy.

“Thank you,” I say.

He’s not. I know he’s not. I know he’s paid to be here and say pretty things about someone he didn’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to do, so here we are.

“Will this be all?” he asks, adjusting his glasses.

I glance around. There’s another row of chairs set up behind us, but that’s pretty fucking optimistic. I don’t know who else would show up. Besides the obituary the funeral home ran, I don’t know how anyone would even know about this.

“Yes, that’s all,” my mom says, sounding frailer than ever.

We sit. The reverend assumes his position near the head of the grave, taking out a leather portfolio and opening it, his face so serious it may as well be made from stone.

“Brothers and sisters,” he intones. “Friends and family, we’re here to celebrate and mourn the death of Eli Ryder...”

My mom starts crying. I wish I could cry, but instead I just stare at his coffin.

After this, he’s going down there, I think. I’m really never going to see him again.

“Eli was a son, but more than a son. He was a brother, but more than a...”

The reverend glances up, though he doesn’t break pace, just plows along through the platitudes. I keep staring at Eli’s coffin, trying not to think about the finality of being buried, about what the phrase six feet under really means.

I should have had him cremated, I think. Then he wouldn’t be stuck here, at least.

In the distance, off to my right, I finally realize something’s moving. The reverend drones on about souls going home to Jesus, and I look over.

It’s a person.

It’s running.

It’s Darcy.

She’s in a black dress and bolting across the million-degree grass, dodging headstones and running hell-for-leather over where people are buried, because of course Darcy doesn’t give a shit about that.

I have no idea how the fuck she got here and I really have no idea how the fuck she knew this was happening now, but the middle of the absolute shitshow of my little brother’s pathetic funeral, I’m suddenly happy.

Maybe not happy. It’s harder than that. But seeing Darcy right now lights up a secret, buried part of my heart, suddenly makes all this just a little more bearable.

Twenty feet away, she slows to a walk. She’s breathing hard, bright red and sweaty, and she smooths her hair down and tries to catch her breath like we didn’t all just watch her sprint from the road to here.

“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to my mom, squeezing her hand. She’s frowning at Darcy as I stand and walk out from under the tent.

The reverend just keeps going. I guess I could ask him to stop, but I’m not sure I see the point.

“Trent,” Darcy whispers when I’m in earshot. “I’m so sorry, I should have come—”

I wrap my arms around her and just fucking squeeze until she stops talking and squeezes me back. I don’t give a shit that a funeral is a weird time for this, I don’t give a shit that a man in a suit is going on about the valley of death, and I don’t give a shit that my mom is glaring daggers from her seat.

I just fucking care that Darcy’s here to make this dark day a little brighter.

I lead her back to the seats. She nods and half-waves at my mom, who nods back slightly.

Then she holds my hand in both of hers, and I finish burying my brother.